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I have has an e-mail from the main admin at ARSSE asking if we would like to join forces and be hosted using their website. Although I'm not personally interested in this proposal (due to the Army now running everything in our everyday work life) I feel that ultimately its the communities choice.
Here is the mail I got..........
Hi,
I want to start this by saying that this a friendly 'feelers out' email. Exactly what I'm trying to achieve with it I've no idea so expect a fairly unstructured email!
You may have seen that we recently started an RN / RM site and a friends / families site. While the latter is a bit of a flop so far, the RN / RM one has started incredibly quickly as a result of the 'power of ARRSE'
. This made us wonder about the RAF, but obviously you've got a good popular site going and frankly competing is just not an issue. Firstly we couldn't catch up, secondly if I were RAF an Army run site would not be attractive, and finally we just don't have the time to take on another project. Point of this paragraph? - we aren't competition.
So... I wondered if we might both have something to gain by teaming up. This is where we get really vague. As I said, this is 'feelers out' rather than a proposal. So a few random comments, some obvious, some not:
Running a site the size of ours (ie you and 'us' - two run ARRSE) is hard work for little return. Yes, even for something the size of ARRSE unfortunately.
Running a few sites based on the same software / hosting / admin etc is very little more expensive in terms of cost and effort than running one. We've proved this to ourselves with Rum Ration (the RN site) and feel that expansion of 'the empire' is the only way to stay afloat in the long term.
ARRSE has a good number of existing advertisers, the power to attract advertisers, but is running out of advertising space. E-Goat could help / benefit here.
We run a very successful donations module and do well with Google adsense after a lot of trial-and-error, and (a change of software? or) simply copy of this could be of considerable benefit to you.
We can push a lot of traffic your way and to a lesser extent vice-versa. E-Goat is mentioned regularly on ARRSE, but the kind of banner ad / front page linking / common moderators and users that we benefit from between ARRSE / Rum Ration would be a huge improvement on a few mentions in the forums.
ARRSE owns and runs on two dedicated and fast servers and there is plenty of room for more sites if hosting is an issue to you.
To be completely honest if nothing else in this email interests you, we would be interested in buying egoat for all the reasons mentioned above, but as I say, I think RAF sites should be run by the RAF, so this is not the ideal option unless you wanted to sell but continue as Admin.
That'll do although I'm sure there are more. The main point that falls out of all that as far as I can see is that return v. effort is very low on few sites, whereas larger groups of sites have considerable advantages. Taking advantage of that in some way between us would be no bad thing.
Anyway, I'll leave you to have a good bank holiday and whether you tell me to ram it or not, I hope the site goes well.
Rob F******* (ex infantry officer - briefly RAF before that, but a LONG time ago).
Now as for advertising I would rather pay for the site out of my own pocket (which I have done) rather than see it full of advertising graphics cluttering up the site. We also have a donations module which runs quite happily and has approx £200 in the fund. Enough to fund e-goat for 2 or more years (Thanks to our kind donators). finally, I didnt start E-goat to make money, nor did I start E-goat to advertise. I started E-goat to bring together our dwindling numbers together for a chat, a laugh and to get stuff off our chest.
However, like I have said it is ultimately up to you.
Your ideas, decisions or advice please.............
Here is the mail I got..........
Hi,
I want to start this by saying that this a friendly 'feelers out' email. Exactly what I'm trying to achieve with it I've no idea so expect a fairly unstructured email!
You may have seen that we recently started an RN / RM site and a friends / families site. While the latter is a bit of a flop so far, the RN / RM one has started incredibly quickly as a result of the 'power of ARRSE'
. This made us wonder about the RAF, but obviously you've got a good popular site going and frankly competing is just not an issue. Firstly we couldn't catch up, secondly if I were RAF an Army run site would not be attractive, and finally we just don't have the time to take on another project. Point of this paragraph? - we aren't competition.So... I wondered if we might both have something to gain by teaming up. This is where we get really vague. As I said, this is 'feelers out' rather than a proposal. So a few random comments, some obvious, some not:
Running a site the size of ours (ie you and 'us' - two run ARRSE) is hard work for little return. Yes, even for something the size of ARRSE unfortunately.
Running a few sites based on the same software / hosting / admin etc is very little more expensive in terms of cost and effort than running one. We've proved this to ourselves with Rum Ration (the RN site) and feel that expansion of 'the empire' is the only way to stay afloat in the long term.
ARRSE has a good number of existing advertisers, the power to attract advertisers, but is running out of advertising space. E-Goat could help / benefit here.
We run a very successful donations module and do well with Google adsense after a lot of trial-and-error, and (a change of software? or) simply copy of this could be of considerable benefit to you.
We can push a lot of traffic your way and to a lesser extent vice-versa. E-Goat is mentioned regularly on ARRSE, but the kind of banner ad / front page linking / common moderators and users that we benefit from between ARRSE / Rum Ration would be a huge improvement on a few mentions in the forums.
ARRSE owns and runs on two dedicated and fast servers and there is plenty of room for more sites if hosting is an issue to you.
To be completely honest if nothing else in this email interests you, we would be interested in buying egoat for all the reasons mentioned above, but as I say, I think RAF sites should be run by the RAF, so this is not the ideal option unless you wanted to sell but continue as Admin.
That'll do although I'm sure there are more. The main point that falls out of all that as far as I can see is that return v. effort is very low on few sites, whereas larger groups of sites have considerable advantages. Taking advantage of that in some way between us would be no bad thing.
Anyway, I'll leave you to have a good bank holiday and whether you tell me to ram it or not, I hope the site goes well.
Rob F******* (ex infantry officer - briefly RAF before that, but a LONG time ago).
Now as for advertising I would rather pay for the site out of my own pocket (which I have done) rather than see it full of advertising graphics cluttering up the site. We also have a donations module which runs quite happily and has approx £200 in the fund. Enough to fund e-goat for 2 or more years (Thanks to our kind donators). finally, I didnt start E-goat to make money, nor did I start E-goat to advertise. I started E-goat to bring together our dwindling numbers together for a chat, a laugh and to get stuff off our chest.
However, like I have said it is ultimately up to you.
Your ideas, decisions or advice please.............
